NEW DELHI: The nearly-ubiquitous smartphone is emerging as an important driver of growth for India's $4-billion e-commerce sector, with proliferation of cheap handsets making it easy for people to hunt for products in online stores.

Sachin Bansal-founded online retailer Flipkart said mobile phone visits jumped 200% in one year while its competitor eBay India said it receives close to 35% traffic through mobile phones. Delhi-based Snapdeal said its revenue from mobile phone users has grown to 60% from 5% in early 2013. India's e-commerce market is expected to touch $20 billion by 2020, according to a PwC-Assocham study.

"With the availability of low-cost smartphones, the e-commerce opportunity will increase manifold," said Bikky Khosla, chairman of the Assocham National Council on e-Commerce and chief executive of B2B marketplace TradeIndia.

According to a recent Accel Partners study, shopping through mobile phones, which grew 800% in 2013, is expected to clock a CAGR of 150% till 2016. Bolstering this is a recent AT Kearney and Google study which says mobile phones are the "preferred device" of access.

Khosla said the Indian Internet landscape is different from the rest of world as first-time Internet users access it mostly on smartphones. More than 30% of TradeIndia's traffic comes from mobility devices, he added.

Apart from apps, eBay India has created mobile web (m.ebay.in), which is designed for any GPRS, EDGE and 3Genabled feature phones and provides an end-to-end transaction platform for consumers to shop online. The company said that on an average day, mobile phone users buy a product every 27 seconds.

"Over the last six to eight months, we have seen huge growth. Customers are actually shopping on mobile.

They do comparisons and transact on mobile devices," said Michael Adnani, vice-president for retail and head of Brand Alliances at Flipkart. "People are now moving from feature-rich phones to smartphones that actually gives them ability to transact.

The mcommerce market is set to grow in tandem with rising mobile penetration in India," said the Flipkart executive. Flipkart recently introduced a mobile app that allows, for a limited period, a Rs 250 waiver of on a purchase amount exceeding Rs 1,500 besides offering a chance to enter a lucky draw.

"Consumers are increasingly using mobile apps for shopping," Adnani said, adding that they are putting resources to facilitate m-shopping and have the Flipkart app pre-installed in Android and Windows phones. However, there are challenges. The Accel Partners report said that mobile traffic to revenue gap in India is still high— of 23% traffic, only 9% turns into sales.

The problem is in part due to consumers' reluctance to transact over mobile devices, though some big- e-retailers have mobile-optimised sites.